Question

Multiple SATA Hard Disks with RAID 0

Asked by: OFYIT

So, here is what I am working with:

I have an Asus motherboard with 6 on-board SATA controllers. I have 2 of the drives configured for RAID 0 as my C drive where Windows 7RC is installed. I have 1 IDE hard drive and 1 DVD-R drive running off of the IDE controllers. As long as I leave this configuration, I have no problems.

The problem comes when I try to install my additional SATA drives. As soon as I plug in another SATA drive, Windows will not boot. It gets to the Windows Logo screen and hangs forever. I tried plugging the drive into a different controller and the same thing happens. I tried every combination I could think of with the 6 different SATA controllers (i.e. using SATA controller 0,1 for RAID or 1,2, or 2,3, or 5,6....and nothing seems to work.

Please advise.

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Asked On
2009-10-23 at 16:32:53ID24839715
Tags

RAID

,

SATA

,

Windows7

,

multiple hard drives

Topics

Microsoft Hardware

,

Hard Drives & Storage

,

Computer Hard Drives

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: noxchoPosted on 2009-10-23 at 17:28:48ID: 25650096

Is RAID configured using onboard RAID controller?
Check in BIOS if you have two RAID controllers and configure one as SATA or enhanced IDE.

 

by: noxchoPosted on 2009-10-23 at 17:42:09ID: 25650131

Note, take backup of system and data before touching anything in BIOS. It is possible that you brake the RAID trying to disable it.

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-23 at 17:48:17ID: 25650148

Yes, it is onboard RAID. I only see one though. There is a place to designate which controllers will be RAID and which ones will not be. I currently have controllers 1,2 selected as RAID, and the rest are not. Then there is a F10 option at boot up to configure the RAID.

 

by: coral47Posted on 2009-10-23 at 19:01:41ID: 25650402

What's your motherboard or computer model.
Most current mobos have 2 onboard hard drive controllers. One does the PATA and a couple of SATA ports, and the other does the rest of the SATA ports.
And it can be fun trying to figure out which one is doing what.

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-24 at 02:19:31ID: 25651396

Motherboard is an ASUS MCP55-M2N-E

On the motherboard itself, I see that the 6 SATA controllers are named SATA0-SATA5 and there is one IDE/ATA controller which I have the DVD-R drive and 1 hard drive connected to.

 

by: BigSchmuhPosted on 2009-10-24 at 08:12:12ID: 25652560

You may have 2 different problems:
1/ Boot order is modified without notice
That happened to me recently : when I add a drive in an unused sata port on my ICH controller, the boot order is reinitialised...and my boot drive is not the default one.
==> Attach the new drive, boot, change the boot order, solved this one

2/ Boot.ini
Windows boot.ini seeks for NTLoader at a drive which path is described in boot.ini
==> Before installing the new drive, modify your boot.ini file to allow booting from every path, that solves the path problem.
More info about ARC path naming convention from MS

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-24 at 09:14:01ID: 25652820

Thanks, BigSchmuh. I'll try those things and let you know what happens.

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-24 at 10:03:07ID: 25653070

Interesting. I checked the BIOS and saw that the boot order was fine - CDROM was first and the SCSI RAID was second which is how it has always been since I first setup RAID. So, I didn't change anything.

This time I was able to boot into WIndows without a problem. The hard drive that I installed showed up in disk managment as "Inactive". So, I right-clicked and selected "reactivate disk". Nothing changed, so I tried it again. Nothing changed, so I chose "delete volume" thinking that I caould just rescan and then re-format the disk. This time it disappeared and I can't get it back. I have tried changing the controller that it is plugged into, rescanning disks - nothing brings it back.

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-24 at 10:04:34ID: 25653079

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I am running Windows7 so the boot.ini I gather has been replaced with "bcdedit" command. No clue yet what I am doing with that yet, so I left it alone.

 

by: coral47Posted on 2009-10-24 at 15:41:24ID: 25654731

>> Motherboard is an ASUS MCP55-M2N-E

OK. That is a socket AM2, and does seem to have only 1 controller.
A lot of people aren't happy with that board, most of what I have seen is like this:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=1908388

Try the drive in another system and see if you can see it there.

Don't know if it will help, but you can also unplugging the Asus from the wall (or turn off the power switch on the PSU), take out the battery and do a Clear CMOS. Don't forget to reset the Time/Date and boot order.

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-25 at 23:55:23ID: 25660058

The drive works in my other Windows 2003 server box without a problem, so I know the drive is good.

After reading that post, I am considering replacing the motherboard, but I want to make sure it isn't just a configuration issue first.

If I reset the CMOS, wont that kill my RAID0 config? I'll have to reinstall Windows again (I just installed Windows 7 Pro on Friday night)

 

by: BigSchmuhPosted on 2009-10-26 at 02:30:21ID: 25660660

So did you try to add boot entries using "bcdedit " to add all possible ARC path and boot again ?

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-26 at 08:16:57ID: 25663088

I have not tried bcdedit yet because the drive does not even show up in disk management anymore. Also, BIOS does not even pick it up either. At boot the BIOS checks the memory and the video card and shows all the SATA controllers. However, the SATA hardd rive I have plugged in does not show up in that POST check. I am going to try a different hard drive and see if it will detect.

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-26 at 13:24:50ID: 25666396

So, I thought I had it figured out. I put the hard drive into my other box and was able to look at it's contents. It had my previous installation of Windows 7RC on it. I thought maybe the boot partition was mucking things up, so I formatted the drive. I put it back into my Windows 7 box and the same thing happened - frozen at the Windows logo screen. I unplugged and checked the event log and found this...

Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.

I think it's safe to assume the drive is good and the problem is with my motherboard/controllers.

I am going to reset CMOS and start from scratch.

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-26 at 19:46:26ID: 25668790

So, I reset the CMOS. No joy. It happens with 3 different hard drives, so I'm pretty sure it's the MOBO...unless anyone else has anything I should try.

 

by: coral47Posted on 2009-10-26 at 20:18:41ID: 25668901

If it doesn't pick up any drive, it's a pretty good bet it's the mobo.

 

by: OFYITPosted on 2009-10-26 at 20:41:57ID: 25668988

Well, it recognizes the drive now, but I can't write to it. When I try to format it in disk management, Windows locks up at 2%. This happens with both drives that I tried.

 

by: coral47Posted on 2009-10-26 at 21:23:07ID: 25669120

Still sounds like the mobo, and with the problems other people are having with it, it looks like a continuing headache.

 

by: coral47Posted on 2009-10-29 at 18:48:08ID: 25699688

Thank you much.  

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